


fever bright

by mariya



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fever, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-04 22:39:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15850854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariya/pseuds/mariya
Summary: In the swimming darkness of his consciousness, Minghao swears he hears Junhui say, "He misses you. The sickness turns him into a baby."





	fever bright

In Beijing, straight off the plane, Minghao comes down with a soulbreaking sickness. _Sick_ sick, to the fucking bone, a fever times 10.

It starts in California, curling a bone-hard root in the back of his throat, creating an itch he can’t scratch, so he settles for popping vitamins and eating oranges. Tries to be optimistic as he boards the plane back to Seoul.

The itch turns into a sharpness somewhere during the thirteen hours it takes to cross the Pacific. Like his body is used to producing magic when pressured; two hours of sleep to tide him over for 48 hours? No problem. Back-to-back-to-back-to-back flights? Seriously, _mei wenti._ It’s the magic of youth, push yourself hard and nothing pushes back, only this time the magic takes ahold of the feeble itch at the back of his throat and suddenly it’s like he’s slowly swallowing a sword.

Touchdown in Seoul lasts for all of two days before he and Junhui are ushered onto a plane bound for the motherland.

The whole time he’s in Seoul, he’s in bed, chasing sleep. Every time he wakes up, there’s a packet of Tylenol and a full glass of water on his nightstand, refilled each time he takes a drink. Minghao stares at the brand new packet of Tylenol sitting beside his water. He’s pretty sure he had that Tylenol, he glances at the clock, six hours ago. And here it is, respawned.

His bones creak like they need to be oiled. He chugs the water, but the fog does not recede from his mind. He needs to get on that fucking plane, tells himself so as he drags his ass into the shower and washes two days’ worth of fever sweat from his scalp. When he gets out of the shower, Soonyoung’s still not back from his schedule, but Junhui is waiting at the dining table with lunch. 

He waits till the very last second for Soonyoung to come home, but they miss each other by mere seconds. Minghao locks the front door as Soonyoung exits the car. They pass each other in the elevator, one going down, the other going up, and then Minghao’s sliding the car door shut while Soonyoung unlocks the front door.

 

 

 

 

It’s like, the second he’s on Chinese soil, the illness stops fucking around and swallows him whole, has him laid up in the CYZJ dorms while the crew polishes the camera lens with a microfiber cloth.

“Can you cough with more feeling?”

Minghao peers owlishly at the producer. He throws an arm across his eyes to block him from sight and coughs unconvincingly. A cough isn’t the problem, his lungs are free of fluid. It’s this killer headache combined with a hot fog, as though somebody corkscrewed his brain out and replaced it with cotton.

“One more time for the previews, please.”

The cough resonates through his throbbing brain.

“Perfect.”

For a while, the sickness stagnates, because Minghao’s doing exactly the kind of shit the doctor said not to. He needs to rest. But as long as the cameras are rolling, he is too. 

They musical chair the rooms until Samuel is safe from biohazard, only Junhui doesn’t get the memo and moves in with his pillow and blanket the second Samuel’s out. Minghao can’t work up the energy to protest. Breathing feels too much sometimes; where’s he gonna get the energy to tell Junhui this shit will burn the soul out of him?

Junhui doesn’t leave him alone until he eats some porridge and drinks a glass of water. Minghao is convinced he’s dying the entire time he’s upright but manages to play it cool. The most uncool thing he can do is broadcast his fever delirium to the world, but back in bed, before Junhui leaves his bedside, Minghao grips his arm and gestures for him to lean in.

He says, “Jisoo hyung told me something. A cryptid that lives in North America. The Mothman. He says his eyes glow in the dark.”

Junhui comprehends. He sheds his jacket and throws it over the camera facing Minghao’s bed. In the morning, he’ll have to battle it out with the producers, probably plead his case one-on-one with the cameras. But for now, he covers the rest of the room cameras and switches off the extension mics.

Later, as Minghao rocks between sleep and consciousness, he swears he hears Soonyoung. There’s no strength in his body, but the sound of Soonyoung is like someone pressing their thumb into the tender spot of his heart. His eyes flutter open.

Junhui’s back is turned to him. His hair is wet from the shower. He speaks lowly into the phone, Soonyoung’s tinny electronic voice answering him. There's an odd pitch to Junhui's voice that means he's lying.

"He's...okay. He has a high temperature, but I'm looking after him. Don't worry. You're worrying, aren't you?"

Soonyoung takes a while to respond. He's definitely worried. “Not with you there.”

Minghao sees the side of Junhui's face dimple in a smile. "I'll tell him to go to the hospital tomorrow if it doesn't go down."

“Okay. Be careful, don’t get sick too.”

“I won’t.”

 _But can you promise?_ Minghao thinks, eyes sliding shut.

In the swimming darkness of his consciousness, he swears he hears Junhui say, _he misses you. The sickness turns him into a baby,_ but when he wakes up the lights are off and Junhui is a lump under the blankets, and he can’t be sure if it was real or not. 

 

 

 

 

Minghao drags himself out of bed a couple hours a time to film, surviving on sheer will and a killer Tylenol/vitamin/herbal medicine concoction alone, before burying himself in bed again, each time the fever growing worse.

The fever fucks with him hardcore. It loosens his mind and turns him soft, taking the tiny nugget of homesickness in his chest and mutating it. He wants to be home, in his own bed, surrounded by familiar smells and sounds. He wants to inhale the smell of sleep from his own pillow, not from the weird stale pillowcase CYZJ provides them with. Every time he lays his head down, he’s reminded that he isn’t home.

Delirious, Minghao looks up at the ceiling and wishes he were home with Soonyoung. The sickness tells him, _you didn’t even look at Soonyoung in the States. Saw him for like, a day. In Seoul, dude was nowhere to be seen._

The fever takes him all throughout time. Past, present, future. His feelings for Soonyoung go way back. Ancient fucking feelings. Pando tree, ancient root system type of feeling, roots permeating his teenage years with unrequited love.

Back then, when they were kids and falling in love over the stupidest thing, Minghao sat around, eyes darting about, trying to see in every direction at once. As though he was convinced omniscience would unlock love to him, and finally he’d have something to soothe over the constant pain of homesickness. _A love._  

Junhui was unlocking different stages of love all the time, each one more intense than the previous. His most recent love was precipitated by a sneeze. They didn't even know each other, never even made eye contact once before, when suddenly she sneezed and Junhui was whipped. He gave her a tissue and she smiled at him.

Weird and gross, but Minghao started turning his head at every sneeze, chest seized with hope, wishing he could fall in love as easily as Junhui could, only it never happened.

But one day, he saw Soonyoung alone in the practice room. He couldn't place the name immediately, but he knew his face, heard about him from the other trainees. Cute and popular, he was a year older than Minghao with a killer code of what it meant to be a man. He was always saying shit about, as men, we should do this and that. Do it like a _man._ On top of that, he was supposed to be some choreography prodigy; he was officially part of the Seventeen Project lineup.

Minghao watched him from a crack in the doorway. He expected him to be taller.

Soonyoung glanced around. Minghao stepped back, thinking he should probably go, but before he could, Soonyoung revealed what he was holding in his hands. It was a small tub of hand cream. He uncapped it and brought it to his nose, breathing in. Minghao felt a curious pause in his heart, a moment of complete stillness, and then Soonyoung dipped his knuckle into the hand cream, scooping out just enough for his hands. He rubbed the lotion into his hands.

For a while, Minghao tried to convince himself it wasn’t true. He watched girls put on lotion. They pulled out these cute pouches full of cosmetics and sanitary napkins. There was a way in which things had to be done. Lip balm first before applying hand cream, otherwise the hands would be too slippery to pop open the lip balm cap. Once the lip balm was applied, they’d pull out tubes of flowery hand cream. One year, the Kakao Friends hand cream was all anybody was using.

But apparently, there was somebody else who had the same idea as Minghao. Only she had balls. One day after practice, Soonyoung found a cute baby blue pouch in his backpack. He held it up, confused.

“Did anyone accidentally put their pouch in my backpack?”

His boys pounced, jostling him around. It’s a confession, they howled. It’s a gift _and_ a confession, they howled.

Soonyoung looked uncomfortable with the attention. He grinned weakly. Minghao leaned against the mirror and watched as he unzipped the pouch and pulled out an Apeach hand cream for all to see, no note to be found. His boys hated it. Had no clue what kind of gift it was, probably somebody messing with him, and told Soonyoung to throw it away. In fact, watched until he did. Once it was in the trash, the universe fell back into proper orientation and they were clear to go home.

Minghao waited fifteen minutes. Not like he had a home to go back to, anyway. When he was sure everybody was gone, he went over to the trashcan and dipped his hand in, fishing out the pouch. He held it in his hand, feeling her pain as his own. 

“Excuse me,” Soonyoung said from the doorway.

Minghao startled. Looked up. 

Soonyoung shifted the weight of his backpack on his shoulders and walked into the dancing studio. He looked a little ashamed. “Can I have that back?”

Wordlessly, Minghao handed the pouch over. Soonyoung took it in both hands and squeezed it. “Thanks.”

“If it’s a gift,” Minghao started but stopped abruptly, not knowing how to say cherish. He settled for: “If it’s a gift, don’t throw it away.”

Soonyoung nodded. He kept staring at the pouch. “If it’s a gift, I should ------ it.”

Minghao pretended to understand. That night, while flipping through the dictionary to find the word Soonyoung used, the page landed perfectly, and the word fell into his line of sight like magic.

_Zhenxi._

 

 

 

 

Junhui tries to follow him into the car. Minghao pulls down his face mask.

“Stay,” he says. “Don’t let them edit this and make me look like a weakling.”

Junhui looks miserable but laughs. Why the fuck did they sign up for this show again? “That’s out of my control. And, anyway, you never look weak.”

The floor is rocking. Minghao stays very still, and in that stillness a rare piece of rational thought pierces through the fog. He needs to get better so no one worries about him. He has to get better soon so he can finish his performance and prove to himself this can be done, that he isn't just a pretty face.

He smiles to revive the confidence in Junhui. “You’d be surprised what the Wen Junhui charm can accomplish.”

And then he lands his ass in the hospital, vomit coming out of him like an arm, like he swallowed another person and they pushed a flailing arm out of his throat, his mouth, waving for help. That, he doesn’t tell Junhui.

“You should’ve come sooner,” the nurse says, hooking him up to an IV with a fever pushing 40 C. “You idols are always pushing it.”

Dramatic, if you ask Minghao, who’s braved illnesses way worse (see: the great homesickness of 2013, a sickness so impenetrable porridgecouldn't cut it).

He tries to keep his atoms together in the hospital bed, chills rocking him to the core. _Recede, recede, recede,_ his brain throbs. He closes his eyes. Time flows. Or it doesn’t flow at all. He evaporates until there’s nothing left. Has this weird vivid dream of Soonyoung where they're talking on the phone.

Soonyoung calls. Minghao grabs his phone off the nightstand and presses it up to his ear. He's free with his words, maybe it's because of the fever. He can't remember if he's usually like this with Soonyoung.

“I miss you. I’m thinking about you.”

There’s a beat of silence, like Soonyoung’s embarrassed. Minghao hears rustling on the other side of the line. He can imagine it in his head, Soonyoung in bed but shifting onto his belly. “Me too. Are you okay?”

“Still sick. Hospital.”

Soonyoung makes a noise in the back of his throat. Code for: I’m worried about you. Have you been eating? Sleeping? How can I help you?

“Getting better though,” Minghao quickly lies. “What’ve you been doing?”

Soonyoung tells him about his recording schedule. His mother visited the dorm, apparently. Tomorrow, he’s gonna meet up with some old friends from school, they’re gonna have barbecue. Good, because he’s worked up a week-long craving for _jumulleok._

He keeps talking, voice soft and gentle, even when cussing. “And Seungchol hyung keeps taking my fucking underwear. We’re not even in the same dorm.”

Minghao laughs. He curls into himself and feels the emptiness of his hospital bed. Without meaning to, he falls asleep to the sound of Soonyoung—or he stops dreaming about him. Whatever it is, he opens his eyes, and his phone is nowhere to be seen. He blearily lifts himself up onto his elbows, confused. It felt so real. He searches for his phone. It’s not on the nightstand, not under the hospital pillow or hidden in the sheets.

He finds his phone facedown on the floor. When he grabs it, he sees the call is still running, but the line is silent. 

“Hyung?” Minghao says into the microphone. “Hey, hyung?”

The silence brings in a wave of loneliness. Minghao lays back down on his side, the phone still pressed to his ear. It isn’t often he asks himself if this shit is worth it. It’s the fever talking. It’s CYZJ talking. He tries not to think about it, because most days he loves his job. The high is incredible. But then he gets to that low.

Minghao can’t think straight for long, it’s the only good thing that’s come out of this fever. He drifts back into sleep, and when he comes to again in the morning, the line is dead.

 

 

 

 

It takes two days in the hospital for the fever to break. At last, rationality returns to Minghao. The fog is still there, but he’s good enough to return to the show and prepare for his stage. As usual, he sacrifices sleep to get it done.

He comes back with a motherfucking vengeance, chanting to himself all the while, _you can do it, you can do it. If not you, who else?_

When Minghao steps on stage and grips the mic, it’s like the fever disappears. He looks out onto the crowd, at the light-up banners with his name on it, and clutches his chest, feeling the mountain inside him move. 

Offstage, Junhui and Yanan help him into the waiting room. They’re performing next, but they dote on him until he shoos them away. He watches them from the backroom. He gets a text from Soonyoung, phone buzzing on the table. It’s a picture of his stage taken from a blurry computer screen, followed by _hen shuai!!_ and a string of heart emojis.

Minghao smiles stupidly at it and texts back a heart of his own.

The brief fifteen minutes he’s on the couch is all the rest he gets that day. In the dead of night after recording ends, he and Junhui are back on a plane to Seoul. He tries to sleep on the short plane ride but he’s still riding a performance high that crashes the moment they’re back in Korea.

Junhui feels Minghao’s forehead with the back of his hand in the car. Minghao melts against him, seatbelt cutting into his neck. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but Junhui’s waking him up and telling him they've arrived at his dorm. They say goodnight, and then Minghao's dragging his body through the quiet room and pushing open the door to his room.

There’s a lump in his bed. Minghao parks his suitcase by the door and silently walks over. He kneels and lays his head against Soonyoung's shoulder.

There’s no comparing a fever dream to the real thing. Soonyoung in the flesh is miraculous. Back then, when just going on living felt like cutting his heart out, he looked forward to seeing Soonyoung, even though he was always busy doing something. Always going someplace in the building. Sometimes they’d see each other in the bathroom or in the hallway in passing. 

Minghao hoping, wishing— _look, look at me, please._

And one day, Soonyoung looking, just as he does now. He opens his eyes, eye bags swollen with sleep. Minghao tries to feel bad about waking him up, but all he feels is that complete stillness from years ago. His heart seizing up.

Silently, Soonyoung places his hand over Minghao’s forehead. His hands are soft from years of moisturizing. Not getting into bed and curling around Soonyoung that second is the hardest thing Minghao’s ever had to do. Harder than fighting off the illness that followed him across three countries. 

He forces himself to take a shower and brush his teeth because he knows he’ll be dead to the world for the next two days, except for the brief moment of consciousness when he wakes up to eat his weight in vitamins. The entire time Minghao’s in the shower, he tells himself Soonyoung is his reward. It works. It gets him to floss.

He falls into bed. Three fucking countries, he tells himself, the warm length of Soonyoung's body pressing against him like something profound. He presses his face into Soonyoung’s warm chest. The smell of him permeates his bed, his entire room. At first, it used to be disorienting, a little unpleasant even, before it become comforting. Something to bury his face in. Something to hold. He breathes in Soonyoung's sleep, taking in that rest for himself.

It’s such a deep sleep he remains undisturbed even when Soonyoung wakes up and quietly leaves the room. He only stirs when Soonyoung returns. The bedroom door creaks open, soft blue morning light slicing across the floor and receding as the door shuts. The quiet stick of Soonyoung’s bare feet against the floor.

He sets a glass of water on the nightstand and some Tylenol. He places Minghao’s vitamin organizer next to the water, and then is gone again.

 

  

 

 

The next time Minghao resurfaces from sleep, the world comes into focus with a new clarity. He checks the clock. It’s late in the afternoon. He gets up to use the bathroom and brush his teeth, trying to spit the carpet out of his mouth.

He drinks the water on the nightstand and goes back to bed.

Sometime during sunset, a cool hand smooths across his cheek, and then the cool dusk air diffuses the stale heat of his room in one powerful exhale. Minghao opens his eyes to Soonyoung stirring a bowl of porridgeon his nightstand. He has one earphone in. After missing him for this long, Minghao wants to tell him something. Something akin to _I love you,_ which is right but isn’t good enough. 

Minghao wraps his fingers around the hand that’s stirring the porridge. Soonyoung looks down at him, opens his mouth to say something, but then Minghao is pressing his face into his cool, dry palm, feeling the exact moment they turn clammy. He turns his mouth into Soonyoung’s palm and presses a kiss into the heart of his hand. He’ll just blame it on the fever, even though he’s thinking clearly now. This kind of thing is too much for him, reeks too much of desperation and servitude, but he wants to do it for Soonyoung. He’s the exception to every rule Minghao’s ever had.

The red orange hues from the sunset turns the room ablaze, camouflaging Soonyoung’s flush.

“What’re you listening to?”

“Drake’s KMT.”

Soonyoung settles beside him, curling around him from outside the blankets. He fits an earbud into Minghao’s ear.

Halfway through the song, Minghao says, “KMT is Drake’s declaration of support for the Kuomintang.”

It’s the first coherent thing Minghao’s said all week. The orange light curves over Soonyoung’s smiling cheek as he laughs. Minghao rests his hand on Soonyoung's stomach and marvels at the sight.

“I don’t think so,” Soonyoung says, grinning up at the ceiling. His pleasure is so apparent Minghao can feel it in his own heart. “He said Christmas and turkey.”

Minghao hums, rubbing his thumb in circles, dipping it lower into Soonyoung’s navel and stroking slow. “Why are you listening to this?” 

“I thought you’d have something to say about it.” 

It’s Minghao’s turn to laugh. “You played me.”

“No, I missed you,” Soonyoung says, turning to face him.

The words fight Minghao like a fist beating at his chest, telling him to say his piece. There's any number of ways he can say what he feels. I dreamt about you the whole time I was sick. Sometimes, I don't know what to do with the intensity of my feelings. I think you're miraculous. But he can't say what he feels. He just looks up at Soonyoung, trying to trade this shit through brainwaves. _You know, right? You know me?_

Soonyoung strokes his cheek. Presses a kiss to his forehead, as though to say,  _Of course._

**Author's Note:**

> hmu if anybody does a drake svt fic fest.


End file.
